james_halligan-07005
I absolutely enjoyed this low budget movie.A great Bradbury story-line and genuinely scary moments....especially that moment underwater in the subway car when the nasty man eating mackerel looked to have done in the ice cool Ed Burns ....still get the shakes thinking about it . The idea that other species may have cross-bred and evolved just as intelligent as humans is very intriguing.I'd love to see this remade with the resources of say ...Fantastic Beasts ....wow.Turn a blind eye to the cheap production and enjoy the roller coaster.
Laakbaar
Why do I like cheesy sci-fi movies like this? OK, why did I like this one? Yes, of course, it didn't make sense -- but to be honest, I didn't care. It started off sensibly enough, but then as it progressed they just added more craziness. First the time waves. Then the killer jungle. Then the lizard-apes. Then the other flying and swimming dinosaurs. Wow. It didn't matter to me that the FX were not that great. They were good enough.It was so...over the top. I mean the fabric of time has been ripped, and yet we're still following eye-candy Travis bravely and stalwartly lead his group through it all. How on earth are they going to get the machine working again? They created the disaster of all disasters, but how on earth were they going to get out of it? For some reason, I wanted to know. And what was with the hysterical characters? "Don't blame me for this!" What on earth was Ben Kingsley doing in this movie. So many unanswered questions.
Patrick Broderick
This is based on one of Ray Bradbury's wonderful short stories and doesn't measure up to the source material. But neither does the classic giant monster movie, "The Beast From Twenty Thousand Fathoms", compare to "The Fog Horn". The Harryhausen-driven SFX movie didn't have any of the melancholy poetry of the original short story.And this movie doesn't either. Not when you compare it to the master's original. But the story, with some corny, stereotypical moments, is a decent SF thriller. The effects are awesome and the overall pacing of the story is good.If you're looking for a good way to waste a couple of hours, and not expecting something like Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" or Scott's "Blade Runner", this might be worth a look.And do yourself a favor afterwords, read the original story (and "The Fog Horn"). Beautifully crafted short stories.As to Ben Kingsley? Maybe, like Max Von Sydow in "Flash Gordon" or "Strange Brew" or Maximilian Schell in "The Black Hole", he just wanted to have some fun making a movie.
Theo Robertson
As a teenager I remember reading the short story A Sound Of Thunder by Ray Bradbury . It's a science fiction revolving around chaos theory and the butterfly effect where time travel is possible and an industry of hunting dinosaurs tens of millions in the past is a once in a lifetime thrill for the exclusively mega-rich . This leads to time being changed subtly but ultimately disasterously for humanity where a war mongering fascist leader is elected and with him the probability of thermo nuclear war It's one of these short stories that exists due to the twist ending . Try and think of THE TWILIGHT ZONE with a downbeat ending . One problem I had with the internal logic with the story is that even if time travel was possible - and the scientific community are certain that time travel is forever impossible - then would anyone allow it to happen preciselyfor the reasons pointed out in the story ? You know you step on a butterfly and next thing you know humanity ends in a big puff of smoke The film version of A SOUND OF THUNDER pads out the premise of the original short story to feature length and the more it adds the more problematic everything becomes on a logical level . Expeditions to a point in time where a dinosaur is about to die in an exact point in timewill immediately lead you to ask is there actually a market in this . You turn up with the Jurrasic period and shoot a giant reptile which only has seconds to live anyway . Is this worth the astronomical fee you'll be expected to pay ? So apart from the illogical nature of the original short story the film version heaps on more and more implausible aspects of its own But it's not the narrative that has come in on for major criticism on this website , it's the production values . Some quotes state that this movie cost $80 million to make . One wonders if someone either stuck a zero on the end , or if Ben Kingsley is the highest paid movie star in history or if someone simply deposited most of the budget in to a Swiss bank account because the money is nowhere to be seen on screen . People may point out that the dino-baboon hybrids ( Yeah I know these hybrids don't make sense ) or the dino-sharks are totally unconvincing but they're adequate compared to the laughable scenes midway through the film where people walk around a city of the future . Let me elaborate: two characters are supposedly walking along a city but it's obvious that the sequence is achieved by the actors being in front of back projection . It's not even blue-screen it's back projection as you see in films from the first half of the 20th Century and the perspective isn't even in a convincing aspect ratio . What makes all of this even more laughable in that it's obvious that the actors are walking on the spot ! Is this a sophisticated post modernist joke ? If you see any hint of sophistication let me know what scene it appeared in One could perhaps be more forgiving since A SOUND OF THUNDER was supposedly beset by production problems from the outset but even so a film like HEAVENS GATE still contains some memorable imagery and sequences . Watching A SOUND OF THUNDER you're continually scratching your head wondering where the budget went to . If this was a $1 million production by The Asylum or The SyFy Channel then it'd be merely average . Looking on the bright side it's a film seldom seen which will be of great consolation to everyone who worked on this turkey